The Dove in the Eagle's Nest by Charlotte M. Yonge (best book club books TXT) 📕

and Italians to send money for the redemption of prisoners to the Moors, and there was a regular agency for ransoms through the Jews; but German captives were such an exception that no one thought of them, and many a time had the summons come for such and such a slave by name, or for five poor Sicilians, twenty Genoese, a dozen Marseillais, or the like, but still no word for the Swabian; till he had made up his mind that he should either leave his bones in the hot mud of the harbour, or be only set free by some gallant descent either of the brave King of Portugal, or of the Knights of Rhodes, of whom the captives were ever dreaming and whispering.

At length his own slave name was shouted; he was called up by the captain of his gang, and, while expecting some fresh punishment, or, maybe, to find himself sold into some domestic form of slavery, he was set before a Jewish agent, who, after examining him on his name, country, and station, and comparing his answers with a paper of instructions, informed him that he was ransomed, caused his fetters to be struck off, and shipped him off at once for Genoa, with orders to the captain to consign him to the merchant Signor del Battiste. By him Sir Eberhard had been received with the warmest hospitality, and treated as befitted his original station, but Battista disclaimed the merit of having ransomed him. He had but acted, he said, as the agent of an Austrian gentleman, from whom he had received orders to inquire after the Swabian baron who had been his fellow-captive, and, if he were still living, to pay his ransom, and bring him home.

"The name--the name!" eagerly asked Ebbo and his mother at once.

"The name? Gian was wont to make bad work of our honest German names, but I tried to learn this--being so beholden to him. I even caused it to be spelt over to me, but my letters long ago went from me. It seems to me that the man is a knight-errant, like those of thy ballads, Stine--one Ritter Theur--Theur--"

"Theurdank!" cried Ebbo.

"Ay, Theurdank. What, you know him? There is nothing you and your mother don't know, I believe."

"Know him! Father, he is our greatest and noblest! He has been kind to me beyond description. He is the Kaisar! Now I see why he had that strange arch look which so vexed me when he forbade me on my allegiance to set forth till my lameness should be gone! Long ago had he asked me all about Gian Battista. To him he must have written."

"The Kaisar!" said Sir Eberhard. "Nay, the poor fellows I left in Turkey ever said he was too close of fist for them to have hope from him."

"Oh! that was old Kaisar Friedrich. This is our own gallant Maximilian--a knight as true and brave as ever was paladin," said Christina; "and most truly loving and prizing our Ebbo."

"And yet I wish--I wish," said Ebbo, "that he had let me win my father's liberty for myself."

"Yea, well," said his father, "there spoke the Adlerstein. We never were wont to be beholden to king or kaisar."

"Nay," say Ebbo, after a moment's recollection, colouring as he spoke; "it is true that I deserved it not. Nay, Sir Father, it is well. You owe your freedom in very truth to the son you have not known. It was he who treasured up the thought of the captive German described by the merchant, and even dreamt of it, while never doubting of your death; it was he who caught up Schlangenwald's first hint that you lived, while I, in my pride, passed it by as merely meant to perplex me; it was he who had formed an absolute purpose of obtaining some certainty; and at last, when my impetuosity had brought on the fatal battle, it was he who bought with his own life the avowal of your captivity. I had hoped to have fulfilled Friedel's trust, and to have redeemed my own backwardness; but it is not to be. While I was yet lying helpless on my bed, the Emperor has taken it out of my power. Mother, you receive him from Friedel's hands, after all."

"And well am I thankful that so it should be," said Christina. "Ah, Ebbo! sorely should I have pined with anxiety when thou wast gone. And thy father knows that thou hadst the full purpose."

"Yea, I know it," said the old man; "and, after all, small blame to him even if he had not. He never saw me, and light grieves the heart for what the eye hath not seen."

"But," added the wife, "since the Romish king freed you, dear lord, cared he not better for your journey than to let you come in this forlorn plight?"

This, it appeared, was far from being his deliverer's fault. Money had been supplied, and Sir Eberhard had travelled as far as Aosta with a party of Italian merchants; but no sooner had he parted with them than he was completely astray. His whole experience of life had been as a robber baron or as a slave, and he knew not how to take care of himself as a peaceful traveller; he suffered fresh extortions at every stage, and after a few days was plundered by his guides, beaten, and left devoid of all means of continuing the journey to which he could hardly hope for a cheerful end. He did not expect to find his mother living,--far less that his unowned wife could have survived the perils in which he had involved her; and he believed that his ancestral home would, if not a ruin, be held by his foes, or at best by the rival branch of the family, whose welcome of the outlawed heir would probably be to a dungeon, if not a halter. Yet the only magnet on earth for the lonely wanderer was his native mountain, where from some old peasant he might learn how his fair young bride had perished, and perhaps the sins of his youth might be expiated by continual prayer in the hermitage chapel where his sister lay buried, and whence he could see the crags for which his eye and heart had craved so long with the home-sickness of a mountaineer.

And now, when his own Christina had welcomed him with all the overflow of her loving heart, unchanged save that hers had become a tenderer yet more dignified loveliness; when his gallant son, in all the bloom of young manhood, received him with dutiful submission; when the castle, in a state of defence, prosperity, and comfort of which he had never dreamt, was again his own;--still the old man was bewildered, and sometimes oppressed almost to distress. He had, as it were, fallen asleep in one age of the world, and wakened in another, and it seemed as if he really wished to defer his wakening, or else that repose was an absolute novelty to him; for he sat dozing in his chair in the sun the whole of the next day, and scarcely spoke.

Ebbo, who felt it a necessity to come to an understanding of the terms on which they were to stand, tried to refer matters to him, and to explain the past, but he was met sometimes by a shake of the head, sometimes by a nod--not of assent, but of sleep; and his mother advised him not to harass the wearied traveller, but to leave him to himself at least for that day, and let him take his own time for exertion, letting things meantime go on as usual. Ebbo obeyed, but with a load at his heart, as he felt that all he was doing was but provisional, and that it would be his duty to resign all that he had planned, and partly executed, to this incompetent, ignorant rule. He could certainly, when not serving the Emperor, go and act for himself at Thekla's dower castle of Felsenbach, and his mother might save things from going to utter ruin at Adlerstein; but no reflection or self-reproach could make it otherwise than a bitter pill to any Telemachus to have to resign to one so unlike Ulysses in all but the length of his wanderings,--one, also, who seemed only half to like, and not at all to comprehend, his Telemachus.

Meantime Ebbo attended to such matters as were sure to come each day before the Herr Freiherr. Now it was a question whether the stone for the mill should be quarried where it would undermine a bit of grass land, or further on, where the road was rougher; now Berend's swine had got into Barthel's rye, and Barthel had severely hurt one of them--the Herr Freiherr's interference could alone prevent a hopeless quarrel; now a waggon with ironwork for the mill claimed exemption from toll as being for the Baron: and he must send down the toll, to obviate injustice towards Schlangenwald and Ulm. Old Ulrich's grandson, who had run away for a lanzknecht, had sent a letter home (written by a comrade), the Baron must read and answer it. Steinmark's son wanted to be a poor student: the Herr Freiherr must write him a letter of recommendation. Mother Grethel's ewe had fallen into a cleft; her son came to borrow a rope, and ask aid, and the Baron must superintend the hoisting the poor beast up again. Hans had found the track of a wolf, and knew the hole where a litter of cubs abode; the Freiherr, his wolf-hound, and his spear were wanted for their destruction. Dietrich could not tell how to manage his new arquebus: the Baron must teach him to take aim. Then there was a letter from Ulm to invite the Baron to consult on the tax demanded by the Emperor for his Italian war, and how far it should concern the profits of the bridge; and another letter from the Markgraf of Wurtemburg, as chief of the Swabian League, requesting the Lord of Adlerstein to be on the look-out for a band of robbers, who were reported to be in neighbouring hills, after being hunted out of some of their other lurking-places.

That very night, or rather nearly at the dawn of a summer morning, there was a yelling below the castle, and a flashing of torches, and tidings rang through it that a boor on the outskirts of the mountain had had his ricks fired and his cattle driven by the robbers, and his young daughters carried off. Old Sir Eberhard hobbled down to the hall in time to see weapons flashing as they were dealt out, to hear a clear decided voice giving orders, to listen to the tramp of horse, and watch more reitern pass out under the gateway than ever the castle had counted in his father's time. Then he went back to his bed, and when he came down in the morning, found all the womankind of the castle roasting and boiling. And, at noon, little Thekla came rushing down from the watch-tower with news that all were coming home up the Eagle's Steps, and she was sure HER baron had sent her, and waved to her. Soon after, HER baron in his glittering steel rode his cream-coloured charger (once Friedel's) into the castle court, followed by his exultant merrymen. They had overtaken the thieves in good time, made them captives, and recovered